Basil Copper - The Great White Space

There was no sign of pursuit, thank God, and as the hours passed I began to feel a little more security in my mind; of course, this may well have been due to the blunting of my sensibilities with the liquor but whatever the cause, I thanked the Almighty for it. In this way I suppose I must have covered a considerable distance before I finally slumped down and sleep mercifully took me.

I went on running. No-one came after me. Despite intense questioning from many eminent authorities in the field, I was never able to give any consequential explanation of my movements or explain coherently how many days it took me to regain civilisation again. Neither could I pinpoint the time when I finally broke down and fever claimed me. The dates between my re-appearance in the valley before the Black Mountains and my arrival at what cynics may describe as a 'civilised community' was something like six months.

I am told also that I had been in fever for almost two months and if it had not been for the devoted efforts of a French doctor and a German nursing sister I should assuredly have died. Perhaps, under the stress of these dreary after days, it might have been better so. But I am drawing ahead of my narrative. I made my way onwards, still pushing the trolley, guiding myself by compass. I must have taken my meals automatically from the provisions in the cases, for I have no clear recollection after all this time of how I ate or what I ate.

I could have had no formal routine and with my unkempt beard, wild, staring eyes, and haggard features I must have made an appalling sight for those who found me. But somehow, I made out along those hellish corridors until I at last found myself among features with which I had already become familiar. Truly, there is a providence which looks after fools and eventually, tired, sick and half-hysterical with the fading remembrance of the terrifying events through which I had passed, I at length found myself once more within the desolate City of Croth.

The river, dank and sombre as the Styx, with its weird bridge was passed safely and shortly after this, among the suburbs, I must have abandoned the trolley which had served me so well. It must be there now, will surely remain there for all eternity, a mute witness to man's incredible folly. For looking back over the vast distance in time since I took part in the fated Great Northern Expedition, I have surmised that it could only have been incredible folly which led us there.

Folly on the part of those who followed so blindly; and incredible folly on the part of the leaders, Van Damm and Scarsdale, who knew quite clearly what dread areas at the rim of human experience into which they were venturing. And yet I can only assume that great wisdom and great scientific knowledge go hand in hand with a mental blindness of a particularly virulent sort. Had any of us the merest inkling of the realities which were waiting at the end of those tunnels, nothing would have brought any of us within a hundred miles of the Black Mountains.

I must have slept from time to time, though I have no knowledge of it; fear was ever at my shoulder, speeding me onwards through the dim luminescence and the weird perspectives of Croth. Here I found further supplies and stores and must have taken what I wanted for sustenance. Of the City itself, apart from the great central square, I recall nothing. Croth and its wonders; its fabulous library and all the teeming treasures of its thousands of fabled years, lies still beneath the pallid glow of those dim and vaporous vaults.

I fled ever onwards. The pulse died away and the dry wind was now at my back, pushing me homewards. I must have stopped, eaten, slept and done a thousand and one other things yet I have still no clear idea how I passed my time. How many days this occupied I know not but from simple calculations I have since conjectured that the journey must have been a fraction of that spent on the inward trip. Fear gave me the strength and sustained me through the long ordeal which brought me close to madness but nothing stirred in the drear miles; the only sounds once the pulse had died away were the pounding of the blood in my head and the dry echo of my own feet rushing headlong through those corridors of eternity.

I eventually came into the more blessed obscurity of the further caverns, picking up stores as I gained the various caches and depots, tragic reminders now of my colleagues who were no more; discarding other items as being too bulky or past their use. As the days passed and I was not pursued and saw no sign of any pursuer, so my resolve strengthened and with it my physical stamina. I gained the Embalming Gallery, doubly abhorrent to me with the knowledge of what lay within those row upon row of silent jars; my compass I retained and with it mercifully pointed myself towards the south and this, together with a small store of photographs and some food and provisions, was all I carried when I at last reached the underground lake.

Here I fell in an exhausted stupor and must have slept for something like two days and nights; I had no means of recording dates but somehow I retained the presence of mind to re-wind my watch each night and morning and in the intervals of consciousness between my bouts of broken sleep I must have re-wound it automatically because I cannot once remember it having ever stopped. Indeed it contributed greatly to my sanity as I more than once woke to its soothing tick alongside my ear as I stretched on hard rock or the yielding sand of the shore.

I bitterly regretted now that I had not been more selective in what I had chosen to take away. If anything had happened to the tractors or I could not start them, I should have to rely on the batteries in my helmet lamp to see myself home. And they would surely be exhausted many days before I could tramp the long miles and then should I indeed descend into shrieking insanity. I greatly regretted too not being able to bring back Scarsdale's thumbed notes or his typewritten copy of the Ethics of Ygor, which contained the key to the whole enigma. But they had remained with the Professor on that accursed clearance near the Great White Space and were surely lost for ever more.

It must have been a week or longer after I began my headlong flight when I at last stepped into the rubber boat with my small store of necessities and paddled myself out into the mist and the strange radiant phosphorescence of that eerie Styx.

It was here, or at some stage during the crossing that I lost or mislaid some of my photographic material; certainly, it appeared that water slopping into the bottom of the boat ruined a number of my precious photographic plates, notably those depicting the slug-creatures we had encountered in our first battle involving myself, Scarsdale and Prescott. I have often wondered since, in the lonely night watches, when the wind keens about the house, whether this was accident or design. Certainly, the possibility of some malignant, extraterrestrial force exerted by these creatures and which might have power at a distance, had not escaped my mind.

Once on the opposite side of the lake I rested again, as before picking up fresh stores and discarding other material; my brain was still numb and frozen and I took care to drink just enough whisky to keep my mind deadened without affecting my faculties. Even so it was a journey carried out by an automaton, functioning through sheer good physical health, motivated only by fear and the desire to survive.

I had hardly dared to hope that the tractors would be undisturbed but there they were, beneath their sheets, each a poignant reminder of the companions I had lost. Automatically, my brain functioning mechanically, I threw switches and animated dynamos until the caverns once again echoed to the throbbing pulse of the motors. Secure beneath my metallic shell I set back along the tunnels, fortified by the throbbing hum of the machinery and the limpid brilliance of the searchlights.